Navigate:

Long after Roe v. Wade, NARAL to redefine choice

'Choice is a dynamic thing,' NARAL President Ilyse Hogue says. | John Shinkle/POLITICO

Hogue comes from a new line of liberal activism — she’s worked at MoveOn.org, Media Matters for America and Friends of Democracy super PAC, a campaign-finance reform group. She brings both a different viewpoint and a different line of attack to the nearly 45-year-old organization.

“I don’t come from a choice-as-we’ve-defined-it-in-Washington, D.C., background,” Hogue said, though she added that she’s always considered herself “avidly pro-choice.”

Text Size

-

+

reset

So she’s thinking about NARAL “anticipating what political and policy agenda [will help to shape the evolving landscape of reproductive rights, for example, allowing] the broadest access to fertility treatment so that poor women, if they are fertility challenged, can have children when they choose to, not just rich women,” she explained.

And she added that the United States falls behind most other countries on mandatory family leave policies, “so that when you choose to become a parent you actually have the ability to do it.”

Despite that broader focus, Hogue’s still bothered by plenty of initiatives related to women’s health working their way through state legislatures. Asked for examples, she ticked off a new law in Arkansas that allows a pregnant woman to respond with deadly force to someone she believes is threatening her fetus. She also mentioned a bill in New Mexico that would classify an abortion after a rape as tampering with evidence. The New Mexico bill isn’t likely to pass, but she said it’s “what I call the completely insane, making the outrageous look normal.”

Even if NARAL won’t go toe-to-toe on every single piece of state legislation that is proposed, Hogue sees her group as having a very state-based focus on activism. The approach is a bit different from Planned Parenthood, EMILY’s List and the Center for Reproductive Rights, each of which has its own role.

“States are the laboratories of democracy right now. It’s where we’re seeing the most regressive legislation and where we see the opportunity to sort of shape the future,” Hogue said. “It is our job to actually marshal that energy and turn it into a visible force that can’t be denied by policymakers and then use that force as is appropriate to pass legislation and get ballot initiatives on the measure and elect pro-choice candidates.”